


Katabasis

by tei



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-23
Updated: 2010-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The toaster is broken again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Katabasis

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Катабасис](https://archiveofourown.org/works/909401) by [AvaDay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaDay/pseuds/AvaDay)



The toaster is broken again.

She shoves the bread in, pushes the lever down for the third time. For the third time, the bread pops out warm and golden-brown.

“Burn it!” she shouts at the machine, shiny white with the letters BL stamped discreetly on the corner. “Black and crispy, you stupid thing!”

Bread in one more time, and now she presses her hand against the opening. It'll have to burn if he just doesn't let the bread out. Instead, the heat clicks off and the slice crushes against her palm.

She sets the toaster on fire. She's sitting sullenly in the office of the local Better Living Industries Customer Service Representative before she even gets the chance to throw the rest of the bread in the flames.

The Representative is solemn. “The punishment for an act of destruction, first offence, is one hour on the Outside,” he intones.

She pretends to be frightened, but all she can feel is mad masochistic curiosity.

She is shoved out of the air-locked gate, her mother standing nervously by, wringing her hands and promising to wait right here.

She stumbles, falls, and gets a mouthful of warm sand. She lies on her back for the hour, just breathing, staring up at the huge sky.

 

The time she meets Party Poison, it's because of the piano keyboard.

“Excuse me,” she had said to the music teacher with concern, “I think that my keyboard is broken. Whenever I play a note, a whole bunch of other keys disappear.”

The teacher had smiled kindly. “That's because the notes that disappear are the ones that would clash with the note that you've chosen. The keyboard is smart and removes the notes that would make your chord sound unusual.”

And so she had sung as she played, filling in her melodies with the forbidden notes of fantastical chords.  
The Representative had looked at her file, tutted, and sentenced her to three hours on the Outside.

This time she doesn't stumble as she is pushed ceremonially through the gate. She looks around her, astonished by the size of reality.

“Not feeling so happy now, are you?” calls a voice heavy with spite. A man is standing a while away from her, his hair a toxic shade of red and his jacket too heavy for the weather. He's holding a gun. For some reason, the gun doesn't particularly frighten her.

“No,” she calls back. “But it's a nice break from it.” She thinks for a moment and decides that perhaps she hasn't been clear enough. “Happy, I mean.”

The man considers her for a moment. “I'm Party Poison,” he calls, and wanders off. He must have a car somewhere, but there's no point in following him. After all, where is there for her to go but back in?

 

When she slaps the paint on the outside of the school, bright primary colours that run down the metal wall and mix in fantastical patterns, she gets eight hours.

“After this, the next level of punishment is overnight,” says the Representative significantly. “It is hardly necessary to remind you that few survive. Temperatures dip below freezing-- do you know how cold that is? Of course you don't, you've never felt it. You had better straighten yourself out, young lady.”

She goes looking for Party Poison as soon as the gate closes, wandering the farthest she has ever been from the city. Maybe the farthest anyone had ever been, at least anyone who went back in. She comes to a shack painted over with graffiti. Party Poison and three other men are shooting at targets leaning against the wall. They grunt names, not at all concerned about where she came from: Fun Ghoul, Jet Star, Kobra Kid. “And the Doctor is inside,” adds Jet Star, jerking a finger towards the shack. From inside, she can hear static and excited voices and music.

Party Poison hands her a gun, almost smiling. She takes it uncertainly, aims at the target and misses, hitting the wall and making a pinpoint-sized hole that raises a small cloud of dust around it.

Party Poison just chuckles, but Kobra Kid takes aim at the wall and makes a hole right beside hers.

“Out here,” he says, “when shit breaks, it's broken.”

She's late returning to the city gates, tired and dusty and grinning. The Customer Service Representative looks at her suspiciously and only lets her in after she's been sprayed all over with some new BLI disinfectant.

“It's people like you who contaminate our city,” he hisses at her, and she laughs delightedly.

 

The last time she is punished, it is for trying to escape.

She is dragged from the gate to the Representative's office, who orders that she be dragged right back again at nightfall. In the few hours in between, she buys a loaf of bread and hides the slices in her clothing-- four in the waistband of her pants, two against her thighs as if they were guns, six in various pockets of her jacket. She stuffs a flat canteen down the side of her shoe. Maybe the Representative notices, but he doesn't comment. Nobody is expecting her to return from this punishment, though not for the reason she's planned.

At the gate she hugs her mother tightly, whispering, “I'll send letters.” When the airlock opens, she runs out before they have a chance to push her.

As soon as the sun sets she can see the Killjoys' camp, a dot of orange firelight a few miles beyond the shack where Dr. Death Defying is broadcasting through the night. They stand and grab for their guns as she approaches; she raises her hands and allows them to raise torches up to see her face, and they make room for her by the fire.

“Good fire,” she says, and Party Poison goes “mmm.”

“I have some bread,” she says, and he nods.

She holds the bread in the fire until her fingers are sweating and the bread is a slice of orange flame; and holds it aloft in the night sky, a blazing flag.


End file.
